Seven Days In October

When someone refuses to comply with a Congressional subpoena?

Find them in contempt?

Unfortunately it is a lot more complicated than that because Congress is not a court.

How can Congress compel the Trump administration to provide testimony and documents?
The Washington Post – Opinion
By
David Ignatius
Image without a caption
By David Ignatius
October 1, 2019

After Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s angry refusal Tuesday to allow State Department officials to testify before a House of Representatives committee about Ukraine, congressional Democrats face a newly urgent question: What legal tools does Congress have to compel the Trump administration to provide testimony and documents?

This fundamental constitutional question may begin moving gradually toward the Supreme Court in coming months, perhaps slowing the Democrats’ timeline for impeachment proceedings. For such a confrontation between the legislative and executive branches probably can only be resolved by the third leg of our government, the judiciary.
[…]
A simple summary is that it isn’t easy for Congress to compel executive branch testimony. Congress can subpoena witnesses. Yet if the witness refuses to testify, and the House votes that he’s in contempt of Congress, what remedy exists to enforce the contempt finding? Scholars cite three legal avenues that could be pursued. But all are problematic.

First, the House could try to enforce a contempt finding on its own. The Supreme Court affirmed in 1821 that Congress’s contempt power, like its authority to investigate and subpoena, is inherent in the Constitution’s grant of legislative functions. So, in theory, the House could order its sergeant at arms to arrest the recalcitrant witness.
[…]
A second pathway would be for the House to use an 1857 statute that allows criminal prosecution of a witness who refuses to comply. The problem is that the prosecution would be in the hands of Trump’s Justice Department, controlled by Attorney General William P. Barr, who was named in the whistleblower’s complaint. If Barr recused himself, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney might still refuse to present the contempt allegation to a grand jury. And even if the grand jury returned an indictment on its own, the U.S. attorney could decline to sign or prosecute it.
[…]
The third avenue is a lawsuit to enforce congressional subpoenas, and this is the one that scholars say would probably be most appropriate, even though the case could take months. Even if Congress asked for an expedited summary judgment by the district court, that decision would almost certainly be reviewed by an appeals court before the decisive Supreme Court ruling.

PBS had this to say about subpoenas and Contempt of Congress.

Push and pull between the executive and legislative branches is typical, Taylor said, but what is unusual is the current administration’s staunch refusal to cooperate, she added. The administration’s stonewalling in the Ukraine probe, paired with its lack of cooperation since Democrats took control of the House, underscore Congress’ limited options. These present challenges for a government system that often “relies on the good faith” of individuals, Griffin said.

“The government in many respects is held together by norms and customs and unwritten rules, Griffin said. “Probably the clearest lesson of the Trump era is that unwritten rules don’t work when they run up against bad faith.”
[…]
So, what will House lawmakers do?One option is for the House to avoid the courts and instead use the administration’s noncompliance as further evidence for articles of impeachment against the president. “The failure to produce this witness, the failure to produce these documents, we consider yet additional strong evidence of obstruction of the constitutional functions of Congress,” House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff said to reporters on Tuesday.

My thoughts are that the House will pick the court option and that it will be fast tracked to the Supreme Court and I think that even then Trump will not comply. So it may not be that easy to jail those who don’t comply with the subpoenas.

I think it might be time to watch “Seven Days in May.”